I mainly go by what fitbit says.

I use a TDEE calculator and go from there. My calories are set for maintenance at goal weight and i just aim to get under.

I set mine to my doctors request, I eat what I want & seldom hit her limit.

or

MFP gives me 1360 calories per day according to my height/weight, etc. and my goal is to stay under those calories and not eat back the calories FitBit gives me due to exercise/walking.

petunia773 wrote: »

MFP gives me 1360 calories per day according to my height/weight, etc. and my goal is to stay under those calories and not eat back the calories FitBit gives me due to exercise/walking.

Be careful with that. If your activity level is set to include your workouts, that's okay. But if your activity level is set at sedentary, you need to be eating back part of those workout calories, or you're overtaxing your body. Above all, if you're still legitimately hungry, eat to nutrition. No calorie cut is worth depriving your body of needed nutrition.

Oh, and don't set your loss rate too aggressively, either. That will burn out your metabolism, too.... You may feel like you get better "burns" at first, but then your metabolism will slow and/or stall to catch up.

I've set my calories to maintenance, and my daily caloric goal to what my "non-active" day TDEE should be when I'm at my goal weight. I do not eat back my exercise calories, and I think I've finally got MFP setup to not adjust my calories with exercise.

I should also add that I eat when I'm hungry. Some days I eat 1000. Some days I eat a lot more than that. Occasionally I exceed my caloric goal. Ideally, I'll stop logging within a couple of months once I'm sure that I'm not overeating on a regular basis.

I am actually amazed that - over the long haul - MFP calorie/weight loss projections are very accurate, and I rarely measure and never weigh my food! I count about half of my exercise calories and put my lifestyle as sedentary although I'm pretty active in the warmer 6 months of the year which I think takes care of any under-estimating of calories I might have. I average about 1600 net calories although in the course of a week I might be between 800 (fasting) - 2200 net daily calories. I think 1200 - 1400 calorie averages are way too low for the long run unless you are very petite. My carbs vary from 20 - 100 grams on most days.

macchiatto wrote: »

@KnitorMiss, can you explain more about rebooting your metabolism? I'm

I don't know the technical aspects behind it, but a lot of times what happens is that by putting fewer calories into our metabolism and asking it to burn more (exercise or whatever), it gradually slows down. To "reboot" the metabolism, you can do a few days at maintenance calories, up by 100 calories a day every third day or so until you see a change... You can try some carb cycling. I don't personally know what your sensitivities are. For me, since I don't count calories and only eat to hunger, my only real adjustment is carbs... I would not add more than 5 intentional carbs a day once a week without close monitoring, and always from good sources, etc.

But if you're stalling or slowing your metabolism, it's better to jump start it and remind it how to burn the calories than to lower calories and slow it more. That's what happens a lot when folks jump into a drastic deficit - you'll burn more at first, more quickly, etc., but once your body realizes you aren't feeding it that extra 750 calories a day, it will slow or even stall until the metabolism levels reach a balance....

Hopefully someone else here can give you the more technical explanation!

I loosely follow MFP, but put much more stock in my jawbone calories. I try to stay a couple hundred under my jawbone burn. I have to watch closely however because I have a period in my past of starvation calorie levels, and my body just won't give up it's weight if I eat too little.